Staff Spotlight: Martin Garnar

Q: You’ve been at Amherst for five years now. What are your responsibilities as the director of the library?

A: I am responsible for the management of the libraries on campus; that includes Frost and our two branches [the Vincent Morgan Music and the Science Libraries]. A lot of my job is basically liaising with other folks on behalf of the library, and making sure that the library knows what we need to do to support the community. We have 43 employees of which I have nine direct reports … So a lot of my time is [spent] meeting with those direct reports and providing guidance as needed. I work with the library’s business manager on managing our operations budget, I am consulted on big things, and I do have to sign off on any bill that’s more than $1,000. I represent the library across campus at different levels. I report directly to the provost, [Martha Umphrey,] and so I meet with her on a monthly basis to let her know what’s going on in the library and represent our needs. But I also sit on the college’s Leadership Council. I sit on a couple of [on-campus] boards: the Center for Russian Culture [and] the Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

The last big chunk I would mention is that I represent the library on the Five College Librarians Council. We meet monthly and have a number of committees that oversee the shared library systems and services that we offer as a consortium. We are also part of the Oberlin Group of Libraries: It’s more than 80 selective liberal arts colleges around the country, and it’s a directors group where we share information with each other. We’re actually starting a couple of initiatives. I’m the co-chair of our working group on open and equitable access to scholarship. And I literally just got the contract signed by the board for the Oberlin Group to [join] the Open Education Network. And so Amherst will now have consortium benefits of that.

Q: How did you become a librarian?

A: I actually started graduate work in history, and was in a program focusing on women’s history. In my second semester of that program, I knew that getting a Ph.D. was not the dream that I actually wanted to live out … And in the second year of that master’s program, I got a work-study job on that campus as a reference assistant [in the science library] and in their map room. Doing that work made me realize that being in a library could be a good fit for me.

I have a lot of interests. I’m curious about a lot of things and was having a hard time picking one thing. And what’s nice about librarianship is that it’s my job to be curious about everything. If you come up to the desk and you ask me a question about economics, I’m interested in economics for as long as you’re there, and then the next person might ask me about film studies and so now I’m interested in that. A lot of people who work in libraries actually get exposed to them as student workers while they’re in college. I’m part of that group.

Q: What would you say is the most exciting part of your job?

A: The most exciting part of my job is really getting to work with the people who are here in the library. We had a lot of turnover at the start of the pandemic … we had to hire about 25 percent of the library over again. There were already a lot of talented people here, and I got to help add to that. It’s just exciting to be in the role where my job is to help them figure out how to make sure that we are providing the resources and the instruction and the services that Amherst needs to be the college that it is. I wouldn’t pick out a single project just because I feel like we’re doing a lot of really good stuff.

Q: What is the role of the library in relation to the institution and the broader community?

A: Historically, libraries have been the academic heart of a college or university. We were the warehouse of all the knowledge. [Now,] we have students and faculty who are using our resources all [of] the time and are never in the building. So we’ve really switched from being gatekeepers to being facilitators. As the information environment continues to be more complex, we are there to teach and support people in learning how to navigate and evaluate information so that they can get what they need to do their work … [especially] as AI-generated information floods the internet … So I would say that one thing that we have to offer — which has been a long-standing job of libraries — is to make sure that folks are equipped to successfully navigate the world of information.

We also offer what’s known as a “third space.” No one department claims us as their home. We serve everybody. We are open to everybody, and we are open to all sorts of ideas. And so we’re a place where people can do research on topics that they don’t know much about or hold opinions on that may not be popular  … We are a place where people should be able to see [their stories] represented in our collections … and know that their lives are just as important as anybody else’s when it comes to the scholarly record.

Practically speaking, we’re also a place where people can have the concentration that they need to do their work. I actually did some research on the concept of “library as a place,” … people will go to the library to study because that connotes a certain kind of focus and concentration. You may have more comfortable chairs in other places. You might have better food in other places. But if you’re in the library, it does something to your mindset that allows you to focus, and part of what makes a library a library is actually having the physical markings of it: still having books around, having a person at the desk … And even if you never talk to that person, and even if you never check out a book, that’s what makes it a library. Trying to provide access to [that space] when students need it is important, because no one else can be a library but us.

Q: Have you been involved in anything beyond collegiate librarianship?

A: I’ve been pretty heavily involved in the American Library Association, which is our professional organization. And the two main areas of work have been in the areas of intellectual freedom, around free expression, [and social justice]. I am the editor of the current edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual, which is kind of our policy bible for free expression, preventing censorship, that sort of thing. I am helping run an online reading group [for] members of the Association that talks about free expression issues. The other area is around social justice. My dissertation research — because I did go back and get a Ph.D. in educational research, leadership, and policy — was on the experiences of academic librarians of color. Within the American Library Association, I’ve co-chaired a number of groups looking at matters of diversity, equity, [and] inclusion within the field and how we can make the library profession a more inclusive and representative place.

I’m pretty involved on the national level. And in the state, I am a member of [Massachusetts’] Intellectual Freedom Committee for the State Library Association and am the Massachusetts state representative to the New England chapter of the Association of College Research Libraries. I’m trying to make sure that Amherst, through me, is represented at all of those venues.

Q: What kind of access does the public have to Amherst’s library catalog?

A: While it’s true that we are not a publicly-funded library. We are a government depository library, and so we are actually required by statute to make [certain] collections available to the public, but it’s also part of our service ethos that we think it’s an important resource for the town of Amherst and for the local area community that people can have access to more things … Even though members of the public can’t log into our [online] databases from off-campus, if they walk into the building, they can still use them.

There has been a history of local high school classes coming in for research sessions and we make our programming open to the public. We have been working with the Amherst public schools on helping Summit Academy, which is the public alternative high school option, to develop a library for them … Our relationship with the town, in general, is to support [Jones] Library as best we can and recognize that they have expertise in, say, working with kids. There is a different approach in public librarianship and academic librarianship and we try to complement each other, so if there’s something that might require the resources that we have and they don’t, we encourage their users to come over here and vice versa.

Q: As an advocate of intellectual freedom and social justice, how have you responded to the influx of book bans in American public schools and libraries?

A: It is true that academic libraries are not seeing the kind of pressure that public and school libraries are seeing. Having said that, we recently adopted a new collection development policy that talks about our commitments to the kinds of materials that we are buying for the library, and includes a reconsideration of library materials policy that actually spells out what the process is if a member of the Amherst community does have concerns about something that’s in the collection,

In terms of what I’m doing in response to the steep increase in the number of book bans … I was just working on some tip sheets for a new helpline that’s being put together for librarians who are in crisis … because if you don’t have a challenge policy, and someone comes to challenge a book, you’re in big trouble.

Q: It seems fair to say that Amherst students have many opinions about Frost. Have you received any feedback that has impacted the overall direction of the library?

A: Our biggest challenge about Frost is that it’s a building that was designed for the last century when our library’s primary purpose was to be a warehouse for books … It’s really hard to replicate the experience of going to the stacks and looking for a book and then discovering a whole bunch of other ones. Some people think that’s serendipity. But I want to point out that we put those books there, in order, on purpose. We describe and collect things so that it’s not just, “Oh, what an amazing happenstance, I just happened to find this book.” We put it there for it. So we need to keep that experience there.

We also see how popular it is for students to be working together and creating their own knowledge … that [means] trying to make sure that we have spaces that include power, which is not always easy to run through a building that has 10-inch thick concrete floors … I actually really like having the balance of the social floors and the quiet floors and the silent floors. We have to serve everybody.

Our job is to make sure that we’re keeping as many people satisfied as we can, knowing that we’re not going to be able to do that with everybody, but we do listen and try to make shifts when we can.

Q: What is something you’d like students and the campus community as a whole to know about the library?

A: I want to make sure that students know that every academic department has a librarian assigned to them and that those liaisons are available to work with the students in those departments. One of the things about coming to a small liberal arts college is … that personalized attention, that relationship with your faculty, and I want it to be the same for your librarians as well.

I would like people to know that everybody in the libraries [is] here for student and faculty success. Some folks are more public-facing, some are doing behind-the-scenes work, but we’re all trying to figure out how we can best serve what people want. It’s important for folks to know how much we’re all invested in your success.

Q: Do you have a favorite part of the library?

A: I’m going to talk about the Map Room. Not a lot of people know that we have a map room down on B Level. It’s actually been my pet project since last summer to reorganize it.  … I actually have a degree in geography [with] a cartography specialty. I’m probably about 90% done with that project … I’m going to have some displays where there’s a map of the month because we have some pretty interesting things in our collection that just aren’t getting used. I think it’s important for folks to know that maps are just another way to share information … It’s not just how you find something, but what the map is trying to tell you about that place … the preconceptions the map maker had when they made it. And so it’s just another way to think about representation and power dynamics.